2012 was the year of vibes, but also the end of the world if you believed in Aztec Calendars. Dirt Showdown, Need for Speed: Most Wanted were some of the big racing hits of the year, and Forza Motorsport was Team10’s most recent racing game release. Enter Playground Games, and its first title as a developer, Forza Horizon. A game that brought some of the best physics and a stellar atmosphere into one of my favorite racing games of all time.
Despite being founded in 2009, Playground Games took it to the big leagues immediately, taking Microsoft’s biggest racing franchise and spinning it off. Three years of production, design, and music choices resulted in their first open-world racing game set in Midwest Colorado. Except rather than an era of underground racing, professional on track, or a constant stream of police chases, you’re given a music festival mashed heavily with racing. And they nailed the vibes.
Not even starting with the driving, I want to go down to the music. Every race, every trip to an outpost is met with a dancing crowd celebrating your high-end cars and the music that’s blaring on your radio station. All three stations were curated with music selections from DJ Rob Da Bank, and you can tell he does his job well.
Horizon Pulse, Bass Arena, and Rocks, alongside their radio hosts, made it really feel like listening to the radio as you drive the streets of Colorado. While the EDM of Bass Arena, and the Rock or Indie Alternative of Rocks are great, the bumping Pop of Pulse is what sealed the deal. Over & Over by Hot Chip, Let Me Go by Maverick Sable, and Something Good Can Work by Two Door Cinema Club are personal highlights of mine, and always made me feel good when they came on.
If driving the winding roads of Colorado, listening to music isn’t your thing, you can always race. Despite a basic story of “Rank up the wristbands and win the festival championship”, having actual opponents that you need to beat always makes it feel like you have something to prove.
Even if the trash talk from opponents like Hailey Harper is a bit hard to stomach…or ends up being a bit repetitive. That being said, when you finally show them up in the one-on-one and snatch their car keys, it feels nothing short of incredible.
If the standard racing isn’t your style, you can take part in a few night races in an attempt to earn some extra cash along the way. Or, if ranking up your popularity is the goal, you can take part in showcase events every 25 levels to beat a plane, balloon, or anything else ridiculous.
And you can keep the prize car along the way. That being said, you can have a solid progression system with fun side projects and goals, but that means nothing if the racing isn’t good, too.
Luckily, it is. Taking the feel of Forza Motorsport 4 and loosening things up to give you a racing experience that merges sim and arcade with style. There’s no “way too easy to drift” unless you set your car like that. But there’s also no “you can’t turn this thing without too much effort.” From the era, Forza Horizon has some of my favorite in-game handling, and it’s not close. Combine that with the breadth of car choice, and you’ve got a recipe for success.
Covering everything from Ferrari F40s down to the budget Ford Fiesta, the 211 cars in Forza Horizon might not be a lot, but they manage to hit in the best way possible. If you don’t feel like buying from the autoshop, you can win cars from showdowns, gain them in showcases, or find them in barns.
Personally, I grabbed most of my choices from the autoshow as I needed them, but finding the barns as they popped up made the hunt a bit more fun. Admittedly, the full open-world experience of later games made the barn finds an even better experience, as putting them right next to the road every time makes things just a bit easier.
During my gameplay, I found my favorite cars to be one of two items. The 1999 Mitsubishi Lancer Evo, and the 2012 Nissan GT-R black Edition. For both off-road and on-road, both cars handled their respective terrains gloriously.
And if you’re into highway speeding down Colorado, the GT-R was great for weaving between cars. Alternatively, the 2011 RUF RT 12 R was one I hated steering and drove as little as possible. But with a large car choice, I was happy to have options.
Looking back on it, the original Forza Horizon remains one of my top choices for an open-world racing game. While Burnout Paradise and the Black Box Need for Speed games may have helped popularize the concept, Horizon conquered my heart purely off the vibes. In hindsight, Horizon 2-5 does a lot of things better.
From car choice to landscape, to pure activities. But Horizon 1 holds the story, holds a top-tier soundtrack, and keeps giving me something I want to come back to. Even if I’ve already beaten it a few times. Sometimes I just want to race that intro against Darius Flynt one more time.
If you haven’t tried yet. Boot up Xenia, or grab an original copy, and give it a go. This is totally worth the time sink. But what do you think? What games should I look at next?
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